


in somnis veritas

by leslieknopedanascully



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Repression, just pining and repression and hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:26:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslieknopedanascully/pseuds/leslieknopedanascully
Summary: His fingers were long, slender things interrupted by knobby knuckles. The edges of his hands were smudged blue with pen ink and dead skin dangled from callouses on the palms of his hands. These hands told a story, but Ronan could not intuit what that story was. He thought back to the day he saw Adam walking his bike up the hill to school and wondered idly where he had biked from, where he had been in the years before he came to Aglionby.The development of Ronan and Adam's relationship leading up toThe Raven Boys.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [batbobbles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/batbobbles/gifts).

It was autumn, and the crimson leaves of the maple just outside the Latin classroom’s only window waved gently in the wind, beckoning Ronan. The desire to be anywhere but _here_ welled up inside of him, his leg bouncing with all his excess energy. He considered cutting class after Latin and spending the rest of the afternoon speeding down two-lane highways and taking in the golden hues of the autumnal Virginia landscape. But it was only the first week of classes and skipping this early felt excessive, even for Ronan.

Usually Latin was the only class Ronan found somewhat tolerable, but because it was the first week of school, they were reviewing basic noun declensions and verb conjugations. Whelk was currently lecturing about the importance of reviewing the conjugation for _esse_, the Latin verb meaning _to be_. Important or not, they had learned this freshman year and therefore it was too easy and boring to hold Ronan’s attention.

Ronan chewed at one of the leather bands on his wrist.

One row up and one seat over, Gansey was slouched forward, his head slumped against his hand. It occurred to Ronan that although his boredom was chronic and incurable, perhaps he could liven up his friend’s day. He opened his notebook to a clean page and scribbled a sloppy, rather unflattering doodle of Whelk. Above Whelk’s cartoonishly large head, Ronan drew a speech bubble and wrote: “ego stultior asino.” He crumpled up the paper and, when Whelk’s back was to the class, chucked it at Gansey.

Unfortunately, just at the moment that Ronan vaulted the paper into the air, Whelk turned away from the whiteboard. The ball of paper bounced off Gansey’s shoulder and skittered across the floor. Gansey reached for it but Whelk was faster. In the space of a few seconds, Whelk moved from the front of the classroom to Gansey’s desk, stepping on the crumpled paper before Gansey could grab it.

Speaking to a rather distressed Gansey, Whelk said, “Why don’t we see what Mr. Lynch had to say that was so important he couldn’t wait until the end of class?”

In an instant, the entire mood of the classroom shifted. All the boys in first period Latin, once weary-eyed and lethargic, were alert as can be, twisted around in their chairs watching Whelk, Gansey, and Ronan with rapt interest. 

As Whelk lifted his foot and picked up the paper, Gansey looked over his shoulder at Ronan. Ronan winked at him.

“Let’s see,” Whelk said, his voice dry and weary. He studied Ronan’s note. “It seems like there is a drawing of…” Whelk held up the paper so Gansey and Ronan could see. “I assume this is supposed to be me?” 

At the same time Gansey said, “Oh, I don’t think so,” Ronan declared, “Yep.”

Both Whelk and Gansey glared at Ronan, and Ronan knew that he could look forward to a lecture from both of them.

Whelk looked back down at the paper. 

“It appears that I am saying something in Latin. I’m saying…” The sigh Whelk heaved was deeper than the Mariana Trench. “I am stupider than an ass. How very eloquent, Mr. Lynch.”

A handful of Ronan’s classmates snickered. A sharp, mischievous grin spread across Ronan’s face.

“Well, Mr. Lynch,” Whelk said, “If I’m so stupid and you’re so smart, why don’t you come up to the front and write out the conjugations for the future tense of esse?”

“Sure thing,” Ronan said, eager for the excuse to get up from his chair.

Whelk handed him a black dry erase marker, which Ronan flipped up in the air a few times before reaching the whiteboard. In a confident, messy scrawl, Ronan wrote: _ero, erimis, eris, eritis, erit, erunt._

Ronan turned to face Whelk, a smug look on his face. Whelk arched an eyebrow. 

“Are you sure that’s correct?”

Ronan bristled. “Of course.”

“Can anyone tell Mr. Lynch where his mistake is?” Whelk asked the other students.

The class was completely still and silent for a long moment.

“_No one?”_

One of the boys sitting in the front row slowly raised his hand. Ronan recognized him immediately. He was new, but they had several classes together. The boy always sat in the front row and Ronan never did, so Ronan had become well acquainted with the freckles on the back of his neck and the uneven cut of his light brown hair. Ronan sat directly behind him in English, a class he found so boring that watching the way the boy’s hair stuck in tufts when he scratched the back of his head was often the highlight of the class period.

Though he saw the back of the boy’s head more often than the front, Ronan knew well what the boy’s face looked like. He had seen it the first day of the semester, when he and Gansey were driving to school and they saw a boy in a worn Aglionby uniform pushing his bike up the hill. High cheekbones, a dusting of freckles, blue eyes. Blue eyes that were now fixed on Ronan.

“Mr. Parrish,” Whelk said. “Where is the error in Mr. Lynch’s conjugation chart?”

“The first person plural.”

When the boy in the front row spoke Ronan could hear the whisper of a Henrietta accent in the length of his vowels.

“That’s right. Will you go to the board and fix Mr. Lynch’s mistake?”

As Adam Parrish approached the whiteboard, he gave Ronan a small, apologetic smile. Ronan narrowed his eyes at him. He thought rather bitterly that if Adam Parrish truly felt bad about showing Ronan up, he wouldn’t have raised his hand in the first place.

Adam’s long fingers brushed against Ronan’s hand as he took the dry erase marker from him. Surprised by the touch, Ronan yanked his hand away quickly. Adam, however, seemed unbothered by the exchange. He used his hand to wipe away _erimis_ and began to write the correct spelling: _erimus_.

He wrote in swift, fluid motions, the marker moving as easily as if it were his sixth finger. Though in appearance, the marker was nothing like Adam Parrish’s fingers. The marker was wide and cylindrical; its shape simple and wholly uninteresting. Unlike Adam’s hands, which were full of contradictions. His fingers were long, slender things interrupted by knobby knuckles. The edges of his hands were smudged blue with pen ink and dead skin dangled from callouses on the palms of his hands. These hands told a story, but Ronan could not intuit what that story was. He thought back to the day he saw Adam walking his bike up the hill to school and wondered idly where he had biked from, where he had been in the years before he came to Aglionby.

“Very good,” Whelk said. “You may both take your seats. Mr. Lynch, I’ll need to see you after class.”

Ronan rolled his eyes and groaned, knowing he was in for a detention.

Once they returned to their seats, Whelk began to lecture about uses of the future tense of _esse._ Ronan tuned him out and stared at the whiteboard. He stared at the word Adam had written. _Erimus_. Adam’s handwriting was squat and annoyingly neat. So neat, that though he had only written one word, it was Ronan’s hurried chicken scratch that looked out of place.

_Erimus._ Ronan stared at the word for so long that even after Whelk erased it from the board, Ronan could picture it clearly in his mind.

That night, Ronan dreamt that he was in Latin class. He was alone, and the whiteboard looked just as it had that day in class after Adam corrected Ronan’s conjugation.

Ronan scowled. Although he had had nightmares so harrowing and monstrous they made most horror movies seem juvenile, there was still something uniquely cruel about the classic school anxiety dream.

He stood up and walked towards the door, but as he did, the room elongated into a hallway, the door stretching further and further away from him. On either side the walls were floor to ceiling whiteboard with one word written over and over in neat handwriting: _erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus erimus_

Ronan awoke, paralyzed, but he didn’t need to be able to move to see what he had brought back from his dream. It was written on the ceiling plainly in his view, the squat letters smug and taunting.

_erimus_

We will be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge, HUGE thank you to my wonderful friend, Karuna, who talked me through my writer's block, read every draft of this fic, and even sent me screenshots of passages from _The Raven Boys_ because I only had access to the audiobook version. It is not an exaggeration to say that this fic (and especially this chapter) would not exist without her. You're the best, Karuna <3

Ronan did not actually talk to Adam until a little more than a month after the encounter in Latin. One chilly October day, he pulled the BMW into the Monmouth parking lot to see the hood of the Camaro open and two figures standing over it. As soon as he got out of the car Gansey waved him over.

The Camaro’s reddish-orange paint job shone bright and bold against the black asphalt of the parking lot. The red and gold leaves that scattered the ground looked dull and brown in comparison. Under the hood, the engine lay bare, a complex interworking of metal and plastic, elegant in its disorderliness.

As Ronan approached the car, Gansey greeted his friend with a wide smile. Despite the chill, the sleeves of Gansey’s white button-down were neatly rolled up at his elbow. His forearms and khaki chinos were smudged with car oil. Standing next to him was Adam Parrish. Unlike Gansey, Adam had changed out of his Aglionby uniform and was wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt and faded jeans. Adam was also smudged with grease, but he wore it differently than Gansey.

This Adam Parrish looked different than the quiet, scholarly boy Ronan shared classes with at Aglionby. Maybe it was just the jeans and the grease, but Ronan discerned a glint in Adam’s eye that he had never seen before. An edge to him that Ronan had never noticed because he had never been looking at the right angle. 

“Hey, Ronan!” Gansey said. “You know Adam, right? He has Latin with us.” 

“Hi,” Adam said.

Ronan’s eyes passed over Adam to the Camaro’s open hood.

“What’s wrong with the Pig?” he asked Gansey.

“Oh, nothing. Well, not anymore. She broke down this morning on the way to school. Luckily Adam here happened to be passing by and showed me how to fix the—” Gansey turned to Adam “What’s it called again?”

“The ground wire.”

Gansey snapped his fingers. “The ground wire! Yes! Adam’s a genius with cars. He was just explaining all the parts of the engine to me.”

“You never let me look under the hood of the Camaro,” Ronan said.

Gansey frowned. Rather than dignify Ronan’s complaint, he said, “Why weren’t you at school today?”

Ronan shrugged.

“Had better things to do.”

“You missed a pop quiz in math.”

“Then it was a good day to skip.”

Gansey pursed his lips, a gesture that gave him the air of a disapproving mother and that meant he was about to say something disapproving and motherly. But Adam interrupted Gansey before he had the chance.

“Maybe I should go…”

“Please don’t!” Gansey said. “Ronan, Noah, and I always grab pizza at Nino’s on Fridays, and I’d love for you to join us. Do you know Noah?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you have to meet him! Come on.”

Gansey put an end to the discussion by closing the hood of the Camaro and walking towards Monmouth, clearly expecting both Ronan and Adam to follow. Adam looked at Ronan. Ronan glared at Adam.

“So,” Adam said. “Gansey said you’re really into cars.” 

Ronan continued to glare at Adam.

Adam sucked his teeth. 

“Right,” he said with a nod, as if this were exactly how he thought Ronan would respond.

The two boys silently followed Gansey into Monmouth.

Inside Monmouth, Gansey and Adam scrubbed the grease off their hands. Adam declined Gansey’s offer of a clean change of clothes, but accepted his offer of a glass of water. When Gansey disappeared into the bathroom to change, Ronan feared he would be left alone with Adam, but at some point Noah had emerged from his room. Or perhaps he had been sitting in the main room when they had entered. He had appeared so quietly that Ronan couldn’t be sure. 

“Hi, Adam!” Noah said, a big smile on his smudgy face.

“Uh, hi…” Adam said, regarding Noah anxiously.

“How do you know Noah?” Ronan demanded.

“I…don’t know…” Adam regarded Noah quizzically. “I’m sorry, when have we met?”

Noah furrowed his brow. “Haven’t you been to Monmouth before?”

“No…”

“Oh…uh, sorry…I, uh, must be confused. I just, I see you around school all the time. Anyway. Are you getting pizza with us?”

“Um…yeah. I think so.”

“Awesome!” Noah’s smile widened.

At that moment Gansey emerged from the bathroom clad in a clean pair of chinos and a blue sweater.

“Oh good, you’ve met Noah,” Gansey said to Adam. “Are we ready to go?”

Back in the Monmouth parking lot, Ronan walked with Noah to the Camaro, Gansey and Adam a few feet ahead of them.

“I’m glad Gansey invited Adam to Nino’s,” Noah said.

In lieu of an actual response, Ronan offered Noah an apathetic grunt.

“You know how sometimes you meet someone and you just know you’re going to be friends? Adam feels like one of those people. I guess that’s why I thought he’d been to Monmouth before. It just felt right seeing him walk in with you and Gansey.”

“Sure,” Ronan said with a roll of his eyes. Ahead of them, Ronan could hear Gansey and Adam laughing at some private joke. For the first time in his life, Ronan regretted cutting class.

Ronan didn’t so much mind Gansey inviting Adam to Nino’s with them. Well, he _did_ mind, but he could live with it. What he couldn’t live with was Adam sitting shotgun in the Camaro.

The worst part of it all was that Adam had not asked or waited for permission. He just opened the passenger side door and slid into the Camaro while mid-conversation with Gansey. Ronan sat behind Adam. The Pig rumbled to life and Gansey pulled out of the Monmouth parking lot, still talking to Adam about something funny that happened that morning in Physics. Though he hadn’t been there, Noah joined in on the conversation, laughing along and asking for details.

Ronan dug his knees into the back of Adam’s seat and watched as Adam squirmed. About a minute passed before Adam twisted around in his seat to face Ronan.

“Do you mind?”

Ronan dropped his knees and leaned forward.

“You’re in my seat,” he hissed.

“_Ronan,_” Gansey said.

Ronan leaned back with a heavy sigh, somewhat chastised by his friend’s stern tone. He met Gansey’s eyes in the rearview mirror. _Play nice_, they said. Ronan crossed his arms across his chest and scowled at the window until they arrived at Nino’s.

They sat at their usual booth. Gansey next to Adam, Adam across from Noah, Noah next to Ronan. They ordered their usual—half sausage, half avocado. Gansey and Noah had been perfectly willing to adjust the order for Adam, but Adam insisted that he would eat whatever. Ronan was thankful for this—there was only so much change he could take in one day.

The conversation at the table inevitably turned to Glendower, as it always did with Gansey. Gansey had evidently informed Adam of the general premise of his Glendower quest sometime earlier that day, and now he had his notebook out and was filling Adam in on the details. Adam listened to Gansey with the same expression of thoughtful interest that he had while taking notes in class. At some point, Gansey pulled out a map and explained his current theory for the ley line’s location. Ronan could hear the full drawl of Adam’s Henrietta accent when he inquired about specifics places and streets on Gansey’s map.

Ronan slumped back in the corner of the booth, thoroughly bored and irritated. He had been absentmindedly tearing up his straw wrapper, and once it was completely shredded into confetti, he began wadding the pieces into spitballs and shooting them through his straw into Noah’s ear. Noah reacted just the way Ronan hoped he would, which is to say, he started shooting spitballs back at Ronan.

“Really guys?” Gansey said with a sigh as Ronan reached across the table to grab Gansey’s straw wrapper for more ammo. Noah had started tearing up his paper napkin.

Ronan and Noah exchanged a conspiratorial grin. Then, in perfect unspoken synchronization, they both shot spitballs directly at Gansey’s face.

“Ugh!” Gansey wiped his face with his sleeve.

For a brief moment, Gansey looked as if he were about to chastise his friends. But instead, a smile crept across his face as he snatched the straw from his water glass, droplets of water splattering his open notebook. The next several minutes consisted of whoops of laughter, shredded napkins, convivial battle cries, and disapproving looks from nearby patrons and wait staff. Adam sat and watched the other three boys, looking quite out of place. Ronan was the happiest he’d been all day.

“No fair!” Noah exclaimed as Ronan stole what little was left of the other boy’s napkin, having burned through all the other paper products in his vicinity.

“There’s no such thing as fair,” Ronan said. “This is _war_.”

Noah tried to grab the napkin back, but Ronan held it out of his reach. Gansey laughed and took the opportunity to pelt Noah with series of spitballs. Noah cursed at his friends under his breath, which only served to egg them on.

Ronan was in the middle of ripping up Noah’s napkin when he felt something wet collide into his neck. He turned to see Adam Parrish looking at him from across the table, a stoic expression on his face and a straw at his lips. Ronan dropped the ragged remains of the napkin and leveled a menacing gaze at Adam.

“You better watch yourself, Parrish.”

Catching on to what had happened, Gansey and Noah fell quiet and watched Ronan with nervous anticipation. Ronan retrieved the spitball Adam had shot at him from where it had fallen just under the neck of his shirt. The projectile was still tacky with Adam’s spit. Ronan lodged it in his straw and met Adam’s eyes. Adam returned Ronan’s gaze, but Ronan could have sworn he saw the other boy flinch. Ronan’s grin was sharp and wolfish.

“This is war.”

He shot at Adam with the spitball, but Adam anticipated the attack and held up his menu in defense. The spitball ricocheted off the laminated paper and landed on the bald head of the man in the booth next to theirs. All four boys erupted into laughter. They laughed so hard by the time they recovered their stomachs were so cramped that they could hardly eat their pizza.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Chapter three should be up by the end of the week because I wrote the majority of it while procrastinating writing this chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

The leaves floating in the breeze indicated that though the sun shone bright in the soft blue sky, it was still late October and the autumn chill had a bite to it. It was the perfect day to go for a drive, though, as far as Ronan was concerned, everyday was the perfect day for a drive.

If he hadn’t gotten stuck behind the little white Nissan going thirty-five on the windy road that ran through Henrietta, Ronan probably would have sped right past Adam. But as he was riding the Nissan’s bumper and debating just how dangerous it would be to pass in the no passing zone, Ronan spotted a familiar figure painstakingly pushing his bike along the shoulder of the road. Ronan blared his horn. Adam jumped and looked at the slowing BMW. He wore a faded coat that looked too small for him, grease-stained jeans, and a look of exasperation.

Ronan rolled down his window. “Hey, Parrish! What’s the point of having a bike if you’re not going to use it?”

Adam regarded Ronan with irritation.

“My chain broke.”

“So you can fix a car but not a bike?”

“Fuck off, Lynch.”

Adam continued to push his bike along the shoulder. The BMW crept along beside him.

“Get in the car! I’ll give you a lift.”

“I’m good.”

“What do you mean ‘I’m good’? Get in the fucking car.”

“I’m _fine_.”

Ronan put the car in park, hopped out, and popped open the trunk.

“Really,” Adam insisted, “It’s not that far—_HEY!_”

Ronan had wrenched the bike from Adam’s grip and was now hefting it into the trunk of the BMW. Adam continued to protest, but Ronan ended the conversation with a definitive slam of the trunk.

“Come on,” Ronan said as he got back in the car.

Adam slid into the passenger seat with a heavy sigh.

“Where’re you headed?” Ronan asked.

Adam paused before answering. He stared at the dashboard and chewed his bottom lip. When he spoke, his voice was terse.

“Home.”

Ronan started to put the BMW into drive, but it occurred to him that he didn’t know where Adam lived. He turned to look at the other boy but before he could ask the question, Adam said, “Just drive. I’ll tell you where to stop.”

So they drove.

Adam stared out the window, sullen. An uneasy silence hung between the two boys. Ronan was acutely aware of not only Adam’s presence in his car, but of the absence of Gansey and Noah. In the short time Ronan had known Adam, they had hardly spent any time alone. He wasn’t sure what to say to him, especially since Adam seemed so thoroughly unhappy to be alone with Ronan.

Ronan glanced over at the other boy. He had clearly been on his way home from the body shop, as he brought with him the pungent smell of sweat and gasoline. There was a smear of oil on his cheek, and Ronan’s fingers itched to smudge it across Adam’s face. He wondered if he actually did it whether Adam would laugh or curse him out. Ronan imagined him doing both.

As they drove further out of downtown Henrietta, the road grew windier and the space between buildings widened. Ronan turned on his music, and thumping electronic beats blasted from the car’s speakers, causing Adam to jump in his seat. Adam reached for the radio’s volume dial. Ronan smacked his hand away.

“My car, my music.”

“It’s too loud!”

“Louder?” Ronan said, a grin spreading across his face.

He turned up the volume so loud that the rearview mirror vibrated in sync with the bass. Adam covered his ears and let out what Ronan had to imagine was a string of curses, though Ronan couldn’t say for sure as he could hardly hear his own thoughts much less anything coming from Adam’s mouth. Ronan began to laugh so hard that the BMW swerved slightly out of its lane. This time he didn’t stop Adam as he reached for the dial and brought the music down to a reasonable background volume.

“No wonder Gansey never lets you choose the music,” Adam muttered.

Ronan had stopped laughing, but an amused smile remained on his lips. They didn’t say anything more, but this time the quiet felt different, more comfortable.

Their comfort was short-lived, however, as only a few minutes later Adam said “Stop up here.”

“Is that it?” Ronan asked, referring to a yellow brick ranch house just off the main road.

“Yeah.”

His voice was terse as it had been when he first got in the car. He sat up, straight and tense, looking out the window rather than at Ronan.

Ronan slowed the BMW and turned into the gravel driveway. Adam was quick to get out of the car, and when Ronan got out of the car as well Adam regarded him sharply.

“What’re you doing?”

Ronan narrowed his eyes at him. “Opening the trunk. I don’t want your piece of shit bike in my car forever.”

Adam nodded, but Ronan could tell he was perturbed. From inside the house they could hear a dog barking, loud and accusatory. Ronan popped the trunk and pulled out the bike.

“Thanks,” Adam said.

“Whatever." 

As he started to get back into the car, the mailbox at the end of the drive caught his eye. Painted in blue on the white metal was a name: Williams.

Ronan turned to Adam.

“Who the fuck are the Williams?”

Adam stared down at the handlebars of his bike. It was when Adam took too long to answer that Ronan knew that he had been lied to.

“This isn’t your house, is it?”

Adam met Ronan’s eyes, his gaze steady and unreadable. 

“No. It’s not.”

“The fuck are you playing at, Parrish?”

A wry, cynical laugh escaped Adam’s lips as he broke eye-contact with Ronan and looked over at the BMW running idly in the gravel drive. He shook his head.

“You wouldn’t get it.”

“What I don’t _get_ is why you told me you were going home, but had me drive you to some random fucking house. If you were going to a friend’s or whatever, you should’ve just _told me_.”

Adam chewed his lip. His knobby knuckles were paper-white as he gripped the worn handlebars of his bike. Ronan recognized something in the consternated lines on Adam’s forehead. Though he didn’t understand Adam’s lie, Ronan realized in that moment that there was something about the strange, contradictory boy standing before him that he _could _understand.

Adam Parrish had a secret.

“Look,” Adam said finally, his tone careful and measured. “I appreciate you driving me—”

“Cut the bullshit. I don’t care where you spend your time. Just don’t fucking lie to me again.”

If Adam had anything to say in response, Ronan couldn’t hear it over the slam of the BMW’s driver side door. He was so caught up in his anger that when he peeled out of the driveway, he turned the wrong way onto the road. About a quarter of a mile down the road from Not Adam’s House, Ronan turned onto an asphalt driveway to turn around. He did not go far down the short drive, but he could see that the asphalt disintegrated into parallel ruts in the grass roughly hewn by repeat traffic. Along the road was a series of flimsy, rectangular structures. The car parked next to the double-wide closest to Ronan was so rusted its color was impossible to discern, its tires obscured by aggressively tall weeds.

Looking out the BMW’s passenger side window, Ronan could see in the distance the yellow brick of Not Adam’s House. In the flat field between the house and the trailer park, a figure pushed a bicycle through the tall, golden grass.

Ronan let out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. All the anger bubbling in his stomach dissipated as the truth of Adam’s secret clicked into place.


	4. Chapter 4

When Ronan returned to Monmouth after dropping off Adam, he found Gansey sitting in the middle of his makeshift Henrietta, brow furrowed as he contemplated the placement of a cereal box building.

“Where’ve you been?” Gansey asked without looking up.

“Driving,” Ronan said. 

He walked through the miniature Henrietta, drawing disgruntled exclamations from Gansey as he knocked about the cardboard buildings. Ronan flopped onto Gansey’s bed. After a moment, he said, “I gave Parrish a ride home from work.”

Gansey turned to look at Ronan. His arched eyebrow indicated he was both surprised and pleased. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Picked him up off the side of the road like a fucking hitchhiker.”

“_What_?”

“He’s lucky I found him. His bike chain broke or something.”

Ronan didn’t mention Adam lying about where he lived, or that Adam lived in the trailer park. That was Adam’s secret to keep or share.

“He was just walking home?” Gansey said. “Along the side of the road?”

Ronan shrugged.

Gansey sighed. It was a heavy sigh followed by a long silence. His brow was again furrowed, but he was no longer looking at the cereal box. Instead, he stared out the window. Gansey put his thumb to his bottom lip and Ronan identified the moment that Gansey’s brain switched from concerned to problem-solving.

The argument began the next day after school.

Adam had come over to Monmouth after class. He and Gansey studying for an upcoming History exam. Ronan declared that he and Noah had a Chemistry project they needed to work on, a declaration made ominous by Ronan’s devilish grin and the fact that Aglionby juniors took Physics, not Chemistry, as their science course.

“Probably better not to ask,” Gansey had said when Adam began to question the nature of Ronan’s supposed project.

The experiment took place in the Monmouth kitchen/bathroom/laundry room.

“There’s no way that’s true,” Noah said. He was sitting on the washing machine. Next to him, sitting on the dryer, was the microwave, its door hanging open as Ronan put in a plate. On the plate was a single grape, cut in half.

“It’s _going_ to catch on fire.”

Noah gave Ronan a dubious look. “It’s a _grape_.”

Ronan shut the microwave and set the timer.

“Get over here and see for yourself.”

Noah slid off the washing machine and stood next to Ronan. Goosebumps shivered down Ronan’s arm. The two boys watched intently as the grape spun around and around in the microwave until—

“Holy shit!” Noah exclaimed.

A spark erupted at the point where the two halves of the grape touched, pulsing in bright flashes.

“I _told_ you.”

For a long moment, Noah simply stared wide-eyed at the sparking grape in the microwave. Then he turned to Ronan.

“What do you think would happen if we added more grapes?”

Ronan grinned and headed for the refrigerator. Just as he was pulling the bag of grapes out of the fridge, he heard Adam’s voice from the other room.

“_It’s not your problem, Gansey!_”

Ronan and Noah exchanged a look. They edged closer to the doorway where they could clearly hear the other two boys.

“You need a phone,” Ronan could hear Gansey say in an insistent voice. Ronan had a feeling Gansey was repeating himself. 

“I’ve been managing just fine without one,” Adam said.

“You need to be able to call someone if something happens and you need a ride. What if your bike breaks down again? What if you fall off your bike and hurt yourself? What if it storms?”

“Then I’ll get wet.”

Gansey sighed. “If you won’t let me buy you a phone, would you at least take my old one? Surely you can’t object to that.”

“And how would I pay for the phone plan?”

There was a pause.

Adam scoffed. “You didn’t even consider that, did you?” 

Gansey said, “I could—”

“_No._”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem to add you to my family’s plan.”

“I’m not interested in being your charity case, Gansey.”

Again, Gansey sighed. “Don’t be unreasonable. You know that’s not what this is.”

“_Unreasonable?_” Though Ronan couldn’t see Adam, he could easily imagine the shade of red his face turned as he spoke. “_I’m_ being unreasonable?”

Ronan could hear the sound of a textbook slamming shut and the rustling of a backpack. And then Gansey’s voice: “Oh, come on, Adam. Don’t leave.” Heavy footsteps. _“Adam.” _

_Slam._

At the sound of the door slamming shut, Ronan and Noah emerged from their laboratory. They found Gansey sitting on the floor, his history textbook and notes still splayed out on the floor in front of him, his head in his hands.

“Well that went well,” Ronan said.

Gansey lifted his head so he could glare at Ronan. 

“I’m not in the mood for your sarcasm, Lynch.”

Ronan shrugged. “Whatever. He’ll get over it.”

Adam did not get over it. 

The next day at school, Ronan and Gansey found Adam at his locker. Gansey greeted Adam with a slightly hesitant “Hey, Parrish.”

“Hey,” Adam said, his voice tired and deflated.

“Listen,” Gansey said, “about the phone thing. If you’d just hear me out—”

Adam slammed his locker shut and walked away.

Ignoring Ronan’s suggestion to just leave him alone, Gansey made several more attempts throughout the day to speak to Adam, and each time Adam gave him the cold shoulder. That was Thursday. On Friday, Adam was just as icy. 

Gansey spent the majority of his Saturday moping about Adam. Ronan spent the majority of his Saturday annoyed at Adam for putting Gansey in such a bad mood. As for Adam, neither of them heard from him all day.

That night, Ronan couldn’t sleep. He rolled out of bed at around three in the morning and shuffled out of his room towards the kitchen for a glass of water. But as he passed Gansey’s bed, he heard a drowsy voice say, “You can’t sleep either?”

Ronan went over to Gansey’s bed and sat next to his friend. The moonlight coming in through the windows cast just enough light that Ronan could make out the lump of Gansey’s curled body under the covers and his dark mass of hair on the pillow.

“I ruined everything,” Gansey said. “He’s never going to speak to me again.”

“His loss,” Ronan said. Though if he were being honest, he had certainly felt a sort of loss ever since Adam started giving them the cold shoulder. But he chalked it up to you the loss of Gansey’s cheery mood.

“I was only trying to help.”

Ronan sighed. He didn’t want to feed Gansey’s self-pity, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about Adam Parrish. So he said, “Wanna go for a drive?”

Now it was Gansey’s turn to sigh. “I’m not in the mood.”

“Fine,” Ronan said, starting to get up from the bed. “I’ll just take the Pig for a spin by myself.”

The bedsheets rustled and Ronan felt a hand clamp down on his arm.

“Don’t you _dare_.”

At a quarter past 3 am, Gansey peeled out of the Monmouth parking lot, Ronan riding shotgun, both of them still in their pajamas. All it took was a few miles of open road and a sky full of stars to pull Gansey out of his dour mood.

As soon as they merged onto the highway Ronan said, “Hit the gas, grandpa.”

With his wire-rimmed glasses and his baby blue pinstripe pajama set, Gansey did look rather grandfatherly. But the glint in his eye and the sly smile spreading across his face screamed of boyish mischief. The Camaro lurched forward with a mechanical growl, the hand on the speedometer flying from 60mph to 80mph.

They rolled down the windows. Crisp air smelling of damp earth filled the car, whipping about Gansey’s hair and the lapels of his pajama shirt. Ronan reached for the radio dial and the boys argued over what music to play. Ronan egged Gansey to drive even faster, and though Gansey laughingly protested, for half a mile the hand of the speedometer hovered at 90mph. Ronan felt wild and buoyant. Everything was as it should be.

They stumbled back to Monmouth a little after 4 am, laughing, too restless to fall back asleep. Gansey seemed to have forgotten the Adam debacle, or at least had managed to push it to the back of his mind. They had a lazy, pleasant Sunday. Gansey’s good spirits carried over to Monday, and Ronan assumed that the weekend would be enough time for Adam’s irritation at Gansey to fade.

Ronan assumed wrong.

Adam’s silent treatment continued for nearly three more days.

On Wednesday after school, Ronan and Noah had plans to continue their scientific inquiries. The grapes had been amusing, but the boys had greater ambitions than just a light show in the microwave. They wanted to widen their knowledge of the chemical properties of the food items in the Monmouth kitchen. They wanted to test the boundaries of physics. They wanted an explosion.

They were at least smart enough to conduct the experiment outside. Unfortunately, the extent of their common sense began and ended with this one decision.

“Is this really gonna work?” Noah said.

“I was right about the grapes, wasn’t I?” Ronan said.

They were in the Monmouth parking lot. Ronan was crouched on the ground plugging in a box fan to the only outlet on the outside of the building. The fan was pointed at a large pile of cardboard that Ronan and Noah had gathered from the basement. Next to the fan was a container of powdered coffee creamer.

“I’m sure it’ll do _something. _I just don’t think it’ll _explode.”_

Once the fan was plugged in, Ronan began thoughtfully rearranging the cardboard.

“Hand me the matches,” Ronan said once the pile of boxes was arranged to his liking. “This is gonna blow your eyebrows off.”

Noah tightened his grip on the box of matches.

“No way, I wanna light it.”

“You don’t even think it’s going to work!” Ronan exclaimed, lunging at Noah in an attempt to grab the box.

The boys scuffled over the box of matches. When Adam Parrish rode up to the Monmouth parking lot on his bike, Noah still had the matches and Ronan had Noah in a headlock.

“Hey, Parrish,” Ronan said. He was surprised to see Adam, as he knew from Gansey’s moping on the drive home from school that the two still hadn’t made up. “You’re just in time for the fireworks.”

Adam hopped off his bike and surveyed the scene before him with an expression that was both wary and weary.

“Help me,” Noah pleaded, still trapped in the confines of Ronan’s arm.

Adam sighed. “Let him go, Lynch.”

“Not until he hands over the matches.”

“_Matches_? That sounds like a terrible idea. I wouldn’t trust you lighting a candle, much less...” Adam’s eyes passed over the fan and the pile of cardboard. “What _are_ you doing?”

Ronan didn’t let go of Noah, but Adam served as enough of a distraction that he had loosened his grip and Noah managed to wriggle free and dash over to Adam.

“Science,” Ronan said. He lurched forward as if to lunge at Noah, causing Noah to dive behind Adam. “What’re you doing here?”

“_Real_ science,” Adam said. “Gansey and I need to work on the Physics assignment for Friday.” Adam’s eyes fell on the container of coffee creamer next to the fan. “I assume that’s _not_ what you’re doing.”

Ronan hadn’t even known there was a Physics assignment due on Friday. But this explained why Adam had broken his silence to come to Monmouth—he and Gansey were lab partners, a choice that had been made at the beginning of the semester. Ronan was fairly sure that his lab partner was Joseph Kavinsky, though he skipped Physics so often that he couldn’t be certain.

“Ronan says he can make a fireball with coffee creamer,” Noah said. “I think he’s full of shit.”

Adam picked up the container of coffee creamer and squinted at the list of ingredients.

“Oh yeah, this is flammable,” he said. “It’s pretty much all corn syrup, which is carbon-based so it’ll definitely catch fire.” He studied Ronan and Noah’s setup. “Let me guess, you’re going to light that cardboard on fire, and then blow the coffee creamer into the fire so the fire gets even bigger.”

“The fire’s not just going to get _bigger_,” Ronan said. His tone was irritated, but he was rather impressed that Adam had so easily guessed his scheme. “It’s going to make a fireball. This is going to be, like, dragon-level shit.”

“This is going to end with your funeral,” Adam said.

Ignoring Adam, Ronan snatched the matches from Noah.

“Hey!” Noah exclaimed.

As Ronan struck a match and lit the cardboard on fire, Noah grabbed the coffee creamer from Adam.

“Fine, if you get to light the fire, then I get to dump the creamer.” Noah turned on the fan.

“No way,” Ronan said, “it’s my idea, I get to dump the creamer.”

“Too late,” Noah said, triumphantly holding up the coffee creamer. “I’m doing it.”

Noah stood next to the fan, which was perilously close to the burning cardboard. Small but steady flames rose from the cardboard, the fan blowing smoke across the parking lot. Noah opened the container of coffee creamer.

“Hold on,” Adam said. “You’re standing way too close to the fire. You need to find some way to dump the creamer from a further distance.”

Noah regarded the fire and then Adam.

“How do you suggest we do it?” Noah asked.

“Oh come on,” Ronan said, rolling his eyes. “if you’re too scared then just let me do it.”

Noah narrowed his eyes at Ronan. “Who says I’m scared?”

It all happened in a matter of seconds.

Noah dumped the container of creamer. The white powder caught in the wind of the fan, blowing into the fire. The flames shot up, yellow and so hot Ronan could feel the fire singe the hair on his arms. The fan blew the fire outward, and it did look rather like a dragon breathing fire, the flames shooting forward in a white-hot ball before dissipating into red embers and black smoke. 

The coffee creamer had done exactly what Ronan hoped it would, but he didn’t get a chance to fully enjoy it as Adam grabbed his arm and yanked him away from the frighteningly close inferno. Given his thin frame, Adam was surprisingly strong, and Ronan let himself be pulled by him, falling slightly into Adam’s shoulder. Smoke caught in Ronan’s throat. As Ronan and Adam stumbled away from the fire, they could hear Noah yelp in pain.

Ronan turned and saw Noah rolling around on the ground.

“_Noah!_” both Ronan and Adam exclaimed.

They ran over to their friend to see that the blue fabric of his right sleeve, the arm that had been holding the creamer, was singed brown.

Ronan’s heart fell to his stomach as he imagined the nasty burns that surely covered Noah’s arm. Adam, clearly thinking the same thing, crouched beside Noah and gingerly pushed up Noah’s sleeve. As he did Noah protested, “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

“Huh,” Adam breathed.

Ronan looked over Adam’s shoulder to see, to his disbelief, a porcelain white arm free of any blemish or burn.

“How is your skin so cold?” Adam asked, running his fingers along Noah’s arm.

Noah pulled his arm away and shrugged. “I’m already dead.”

“Don’t even joke about that!” Adam said. “You could’ve seriously been hurt. It’s a miracle you didn’t get burned.”

“That stop drop and roll thing really works,” Noah said, unnervingly flippant.

The boys were interrupted by the sound of the door to Monmouth flinging open as Gansey sprinted out of the building toward them.

“What the hell happened here?” Gansey demanded as he took in the scene before him. The cardboard was still smoldering, the fan blowing thick smoke and bits of cardboard across the parking lot. The air smelled of campfire and something nauseatingly chemical.

“Lynch had the bright idea to blow up some coffee creamer,” Adam said. “And he nearly blew up Noah in the process.”

Gansey turned to face Ronan, his expression as smoldering as the fire behind him. _“What?”_

“Noah’s fine,” Ronan said, though he couldn’t quite meet Gansey’s eye. Even though Noah _was_ fine, Ronan still felt queasy with the knowledge that Noah very easily could have ended up in the hospital.

Noah stood up and brushed soot from his pants. “It’s no big deal, guys. Really.”

Gansey opened his mouth, no doubt to start in on a lecture, but was interrupted by the whine of sirens.

“Fuck,” Ronan said. The blue and red lights of a police car flashed on the horizon, a firetruck following behind. “Do you think they’re coming here?”

“I don’t know, Ronan,” Adam said, “why would the fire truck come to the building where _a giant fireball erupted from the parking lot_?”

“Who would’ve called 911?” Ronan shot back. “None of us did.”

“Anyone!” Adam exclaimed. “Literally anyone within a mile radius of Monmouth would’ve seen the fire!”

“_I_ nearly called 911,” Gansey said.

When the police car and firetruck did, inevitably, turn into the Monmouth parking lot, Gansey turned to Ronan and said, “Don’t you say a _word_ to them.”

Gansey then looked to Adam. The two boys locked eyes and exchanged a small nod. Gansey was in Damage Control Mode as he and Adam walked over to the officers who emerged from the police car.

As Ronan watched the firefighters spray the burning cardboard, he overheard bits of Gansey and Adam’s conversation with the officers. Gansey oozed charm and Adam was the very face of reasonableness and politeness as they explained that they had a Physics project due at the end of the week and their friends had perhaps gotten a bit _too_ overzealous in their experiment and I assure you nothing like this will ever happen again, sir.

“We convinced them not to put this on anyone’s record,” Gansey informed Ronan and Noah once the policemen and firefighters had left. “But we do have to pay a fine for starting a bonfire without a permit.” Gansey looked at Ronan. “I expect you can take care of that?”

Ronan sighed. Sure, the fine was annoying, but the real punishment would be the call to Declan explaining why he needed the money.

Adam remained at Monmouth for the rest of the evening to work on the Physics assignment. Ronan, in a sour mood after a predictably heated phone call with Declan, secluded himself in his room. But even through his closed door he could hear Gansey and Adam. He could not make out their conversation, but he could tell that they weren’t arguing nor were they walking on eggshells with each other. Rather, he heard cheery intonations, laughter, and not a single mention of cell phones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! and a special thank you to Karuna for suggesting the coffee creamer fireball. i don't know if Ronan and Noah's exact setup would work, but powdered non-dairy coffee creamer is, in fact, flammable. i would not suggest replicating any of the "science projects" depicted in this chapter, but here are some fun videos i came across during my research:
> 
> Grape in Microwave Plasma!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGX289yjew8
> 
> How Microwaving Grapes Makes Plasma: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCrtk-pyP0I
> 
> Coffee Creamer IS Flammable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu2U7SZRc70
> 
> Mythbusters: Creamer Cannon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRw4ZRqmxOc


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see endnotes for content warnings

Individually, they were not the scariest or most vicious dream creatures Ronan’s brain had ever concocted. They were bird-like monsters, twice as large as an eagle, feathers the same dark blue-gray as the night sky they emerged from. Their eyes were red, their talons sharp as knives. Typical nightmare fare. 

There were just so many of them.

It started out as just one, flying towards Ronan with pointed vehemence. The Orphan Girl emerged from her hiding spot among the trees and handed Ronan a rock, which he threw at the monster’s head. The rock hit its mark and the bird fell out of the sky. A few more flew towards him and it became a bit of a game, the Orphan Girl fetching rocks and Ronan knocking out the birds. 

It didn’t become a nightmare until he heard the scream, the piercing sound of hundreds of birds screeching at once. The Orphan Girl yelled at him to run, but Ronan didn’t move. 

Ronan didn’t move, but the sky did. The dark night sky fluttered and shifted, like a kaleidoscope in which all the beads are different shades of black. Ronan stood watching, transfixed. By the time he realized that he was not looking at the sky at all, he didn’t have a chance to run.

The birds descended on him all at once, the sky behind them not dark at all but an angry orange-red. The monsters swirled around him like a tornado, the beating of their wings deafening. Sharp beaks ripped at his clothes. Ronan fell to his knees, holding up his arms in an X to protect his face. The birds screamed and Ronan did too when he felt the talons tear into his skin.

He woke, floating above his body. Below him was not his bed in Monmouth, but a park bench. His body was a shadowy, dark mass, half obscured by a canopy of leaves from the tree next to the bench. He listened carefully, expecting to hear the screech of the dream monsters, but instead only heard the buzz of cicadas.

It took him a moment to remember how he came to be sleeping in the park. Nothing particular had happened that day to set him off. It was the snowballing of little things: a passive aggressive voicemail from Declan, an offhand comment that reminded him of his father, an irritable attitude from his lack of sleep the previous night. All day he’d been restless and on edge, so that night he left Monmouth and drove to the liquor store on the outskirts of town where the weary-eyed cashier didn’t bother to ask for his obviously fake ID and then he walked to the park with his case of beer.

As soon as Ronan returned to his body, he became aware of a biting pain in his arms.

The park bench felt cold and hard against his back. His head spun as he slowly sat up. He tried to use his hands to prop himself but his arms screamed in protest. It was then that he looked down and saw the blood covering his forearms.

_Shit_, he thought, panic running through his body. _Shit shit shit._

“Ronan…”

The voice, sudden and inexplicable, belonged to Noah. He stood over Ronan, his face so pale he almost looked translucent. His eyes were wide and he was trembling.

Ronan opened his mouth to explain, but explaining was impossible and the pain rendered him short of breath.

At some point he must have passed out from blood-loss, as he had no memory of the ambulance ride to the hospital. The next thing he remembered he was in a hospital bed and Gansey was sitting nearby on the edge of a plastic chair, watching him through his wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing his ridiculous baby blue pinstripe pajama set. Ronan wanted to tease him about it to lighten the mood, but Gansey’s eyes were red from crying and Ronan knew the joke would fall flat.

Declan showed up at the hospital and like Gansey, he still wore his pajamas. He spoke to Gansey and the nurses in that way of his that made him seem twice his age. But between his ruffled hair, his faded sleep shirt, and an unfamiliar tremble in his voice, he for once looked like what he was: a teenager playacting at adulthood.

Declan’s obvious worry made Ronan’s stomach twist up in knots. But then Declan suggested that Ronan should move out of Monmouth, and Ronan lashed out with enough venom to turn Declan’s worry into irritation. Ronan’s venom and Declan’s irritation of course escalated into an argument, nasty and familiar and loud enough to draw the attention of a nurse who promptly asked Declan to step into the hallway. 

The nurses urged Ronan to rest, insisting that he would feel better if he just got some sleep. They didn’t understand that sleep was the problem. So he passed the night staring at the wall, dozing in and out of a fitful half-sleep. 

In the morning, a nurse entered Ronan’s room and said, “You have a visitor.”

Ronan sighed, expecting more anxious platitudes from Gansey or more haranguing from Declan. Instead, he was surprised to see Adam Parrish walk in behind the nurse, a baseball cap pulled low over his face. He mumbled an awkward hello as he sat down in the plastic chair on the far side of the room, rather than sitting in the one next to the bed.

“I’m not fucking contagious,” Ronan said in lieu of a proper greeting.

“Right. Um...”

Head down, Adam moved to the chair closer to the bed. He didn’t make any eye contact with Ronan, he wouldn’t even look at him. Adam’s obvious discomfort was worse than Gansey’s doting or Declan’s worry and Ronan wished he hadn’t bothered visiting.

“Ronan...I just wanted to say...”

“Don’t give me any of that corny ‘you make the world a better place’ bullshit.” He had gotten enough of that from Gansey.

Adam lifted his head to look at Ronan. His face was still shadowed by the brim of his cap and Ronan noticed that the shadow seemed darker under Adam’s right eye.

“I wanted to apologize,” Adam said. “Gansey called me last night. I tried to come to the hospital but my parents are strict about curfew and I got caught sneaking out.”

Ronan hardly heard what Adam said, he was too distracted by the realization that the darker shadow under Adam’s eye was not a shadow at all but a bruise. Adam clearly expected Ronan to say something, but Ronan was too fixated on the bruise to speak.

Finally, Ronan interrupted the silence by flicking up the brim of Adam’s cap. The hat did not fall off, but it now rested high enough on Adam’s head to reveal a perturbed expression on Adam’s face and a nasty black eye.

“You get in a fight, Parrish?”

Adam readjusted his hat.

“It’s nothing. I fell off my bike.”

“Bullshit.”

Adam sighed.

“Now’s not the time to get into it.”

“Come on, man. I’m sick of everyone pussyfooting around me. What the hell happened to you?”

Adam raised his eyebrows.

“What the hell happened to _you_?”

“I had a bad dream.”

“Come on. Seriously.”

Ronan leveled an icy gaze at Adam.

“It was a mistake. It’s not going to happen again.”

“This,” Adam gestured at Ronan’s arms, “doesn’t happen by mistake.”

“Neither does that,” Ronan said, flicking his finger in the direction of Adam’s eye.

Adam sighed. They had reached an impasse, so they sat uncomfortably with the sounds of footsteps passing the door and the muffled voices of nurses and doctors.

Finally, Adam let out a shaky breath.

“Last night, I tried to sneak out.” Adam spoke slowly, carefully. His gaze was fixed on the arm of the hospital bed. “But my dad’s strict about curfew. He caught me and he...he was mad. He, um, he has a bit of a temper.”

There was a long silence, as it took Ronan a minute or two to realize what Adam meant by this. For Ronan, who loved his father more than anything and who had been loved by his father in equal measure, the connection between a broken curfew and a black eye was not readily apparent. But as soon as he made the connection, he could feel white-hot anger take root in his chest. When Ronan spoke, there was venom in his voice.

“Your _dad_ did that to you?”

Certain little details began to click into place in Ronan’s mind. Glimpses of bruises on Adam’s arms when he pushed up his sleeves. Adam missing school and giving cagey answers as to why. Adam never inviting Ronan or Gansey to his house. The way Adam’s sentences became clipped and vague whenever the subject of his parents came up.

“I wasn’t careful enough,” Adam said. “I stepped on the creaky floorboard outside my parents’ room.”

Ronan stared at the bruise under Adam’s eye. The skin around it looked a sickly yellow under the fluorescent lights of the hospital room. Adam wouldn’t quite meet Ronan’s eyes, and Ronan realized with sickening dread that there was a part of Adam that blamed himself. Ronan could feel his anger boil over and spread through every inch of his body. He clenched his hands so tightly that his arms, still tender from the dream wounds, ached in protest.

“It doesn’t matter how careful you were,” Ronan said. “It doesn’t matter if you robbed a fucking bank. He shouldn’t have done that to you.”

Adam said nothing; he simply stared at Ronan’s arm. Ronan shifted uncomfortably.

Expectation hung in the air. Adam had confessed something to Ronan, put his trust in him, and now it was Ronan’s turn to reciprocate. To explain why he was in this hospital bed. But Ronan simply stared at Adam, unable to return the favor.

He remembered his father, nearly ten years earlier, pulling him aside and telling him, “You must _never_ tell anyone about your dreams. Never. You understand?” Ronan could still feel the weight of Niall Lynch’s hands resting heavily on his then small shoulders, could remember the intensity of his gaze, how his Irish accent lacked its usual singsong cadence.

Ronan continued to stare at Adam, silent. Adam let out a long sigh.

Outside the hospital room door, they could hear the clatter of a gurney being pushed down the hallway, accompanied by voices and heavy footsteps. Just when the silence between the two boys became nearly unbearable and Ronan wanted to tell Adam to just leave, Adam cocked his head to the side and began intensely studying the bottom of Ronan’s hospital bed.

“You drop something?” Ronan said.

Adam looked up at him, thoughtful. 

“How much do you weigh?”

“The fuck you need to know that for?”

“150 pounds? 160?” Adam kicked at one of the wheels on the hospital bed. “I’m thinking about that hill that leads up to the parking lot. And,” Adam smiled slyly, “I’m thinking about how fast you could roll down that hill in this hospital bed.”

Ronan arched an eyebrow.

Adam continued, “The hill’s probably, what, a forty percent grade? And if you weigh 150 pounds, and the hospital bed weighs about 200 pounds...” Adam furrowed his brow. “You’d probably pick up enough speed that you’d be going nearly thirty miles per hour.”

“That’s all?” 

“Thirty miles per hour would feel a lot faster in that hospital bed than it would in a car.”

“C’mon, Einstein, if you can do all that math in your head you can rig up the bed to make it go faster than thirty miles an hour.”

“The real question,” Adam said, “is how we’d get the hospital bed out to the parking lot.”

“That’s easy,” Ronan said, “You put on some scrubs, throw a sheet over me, and just roll me out of the hospital.”

“Oh it’s that easy?” 

“Works in the movies.”

Adam let out a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. Ronan, in spite of himself, smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: depiction of suicide attempt, discussion of suicide, discussion of child abuse


	6. Chapter 6

Winter eventually warmed into spring and as leaves returned to the trees the angry red scars on Ronan’s arms faded to pink. Small white petals of dogwood blossoms dotted the black asphalt of the Monmouth parking lot. The air was balmy in a way that usually made Ronan ache with longing. The sweetness of spring carried a bitter aftertaste of nostalgia for the Barns, for spring afternoons spent chasing his brothers through overgrown fields. Usually, the longing was so strong it bubbled under his skin and left him feeling angry and on edge.

But on this particular afternoon in late April, Ronan felt perfectly content.

He sat on a wooden moving dolly that he and Adam had stumbled upon in the basement of Monmouth. Even through the fabric of his jeans, Ronan could feel the prickle of the splintering wood. He sat cross-legged, hands clutching the edges of the dolly. Several feet of bungee cord connected the dolly to the BMW. The bicycle helmet that Adam had offered to Ronan lay in the grass several feet away.

“What’s the hold-up, Parrish?” Ronan yelled at the car.

Adam leaned his head out the open driver’s seat window.

“Give me a minute!” Adam shouted back.

Ronan let out an exaggerated groan that he hoped was loud enough for Adam to hear. Several minutes passed before the BMW purred to life. Ronan tightened his grip on the dolly, bracing himself.

The car lurched forward, moving at a slow, halting speed. The dolly rolled behind, slower than Ronan’s walking pace.

Ronan exclaimed, “Hit the gas!”

In reply, the car shuddered and jolted forward. The sudden burst of momentum projected Ronan forward, fast enough to generate a nice breeze passing over his shaved head, but not nearly fast enough to satisfy the restless adrenaline brewing beneath his skin.

“Come o—”

A loud sputtering noise interrupted Ronan’s complaint as the car stalled. The car stalled, but the dolly still had momentum, rolling straight for the bumper of the BMW. Anticipating that the dolly would soon crash into the car, Ronan rolled off the dolly, asphalt biting into his skin.

Ronan jumped to his feet and brushed little black bits of asphalt off his stinging, blood-smeared arms.

“The fuck was that?” Ronan said as he approached the driver’s side window of the BMW. “Don’t you know how to drive?”

“Yes,” Adam said, “but I’ve never driven a stick-shift before.”

“And you didn’t think to mention that when I gave you the keys to my car?”

Adam, impervious to Ronan’s annoyance, simply shrugged. “I can _fix_ a manual transmission, so I figured it couldn’t be too hard to drive one. You and Gansey do it easy enough.”

“You’re a real piece of work, Parrish. Now get the fuck out of my car.”

Ronan and Adam swapped places. Ronan got the car running and turned up the music. Some of the dogwood blossoms had blown into the car and were scattered on the dark leather seats. Ronan leaned out the window and looked to the back of the car. On the dolly sat Adam Parrish.He wore his bicycle helmet and he gripped the edges of the dolly, knuckles white, teeth gritted.

“You ready, Parrish?” Ronan called back to the other boy.

Ronan couldn’t hear Adam’s response, but could read the shape of his lips asking: _What?_

After turning down the music, Ronan again asked, “You ready?

“Let’s go!”

After one last glimpse at Adam in the rearview mirror, Ronan applied uncharacteristically soft pressure to the gas pedal. _Uncharacteristically_ soft, but forceful enough that the car lurched forward and Adam let out a whoop. As Ronan increased the speed of the car, he could hear Adam laughing. Approaching the corner of the parking lot, he turned the steering wheel and watched in the rearview mirror as Adam and the dolly swung in a wide arc. Adam let out a shriek of surprise that dissolved into howling laughter.

“Piss yourself yet, Parrish?” Ronan yelled.

“Faster!” Adam shouted back.

A grin crept across Ronan’s face. Adrenaline buzzed through his veins as though_ he_ were the one being swung about in the dolly. Ronan smashed the gas pedal. The BMW exploded forward, Adam and the dolly fishtailing precariously in its wake. In barely the space of a minute, Ronan reached the opposite end of the parking lot. Tires squealed as he swerved to avoid careening off into the grass. Behind him, the dolly swung wide—too wide—and overturned, sending Adam skidding across the asphalt. Tires squealed once again as Ronan hit the brake.

Ronan found Adam sitting on the ground, inspecting the scrapes all along his arms.

“That fast enough for you?” Ronan said. He offered Adam a hand to help him up. Though their hands only touched for the brief moment it took for Adam to jump to his feet, Ronan felt the warm residue of Adam’s touch long after the encounter.

Just when Ronan was going to ask if Adam wanted to go again, he heard the sputtering of the Camaro engine as it pulled into the Monmouth lot. Gansey got out of the car and surveyed the scene before him.

“Should I even ask what you’re doing?” Gansey said.

Ronan grinned. “Just took Parrish for the spin on that moving dolly. He flew across the parking lot like a rag doll.”

Adam shot Ronan a weighty glare that communicated his disagreement on that description of events.

“You wanna go next?” Ronan asked Gansey, ignoring Adam.

Gansey looked Adam down from head to toe, taking in all the scuff marks, scrapes, and bruises.

“Absolutely not,” he said. Gansey jutted his thumb in Ronan’s direction and said to Adam, “How’d you let him talk you into this?”

Adam just shrugged. Shaking his head in exasperation, Gansey left the scene of the disaster and headed inside Monmouth. Once Gansey’s back was turned, Ronan glanced over at Adam. The other boy caught his gaze and gave him a small, sly smile. Ronan was struck by the novelty of this expression on Adam’s face and how well it suited the usually sullen boy. It was a smile full of mischief and possibility.

Ronan grinned back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!!


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